This is just ridiculous: what has our country turned into. Some other famous people/leaders/institutions in history have turned lies, information manipulation, and irrational patriotism to achieve foreign policy goals - 1930´s Germany and Japan, for instance. Not good company.

US Army´s ´fake´ letters cause stir


A series of letters supposedly written by US troops in Iraq detailing their successes in the country were all written by their commander, it has emerged.

The letters came to light when some of the soldiers´ families sent them to local newspapers.

Editors became suspicious when they noticed the letters had identical phrases even though they were signed by different soldiers.

"After nearly five months here, the people still come running from their homes, into the 110-degree heat, waving to us as our troops drive by on daily patrols of the city," read one line.

One soldier´s mother said she knew it was not her son´s words as he did not have the linguistic ability.

Lessons Learned:
- the more people you are arranging things for, the more contingency planning you need to do, like small details such as, "what to do if it rains". To ruin 24 people´s trip. Well, that sucks.
- If you are going on a camping trip, it would behoove you, no - wait, it would be stupid not to check the weather report.
- The fact that it´s rained thee days straight on the leeward (read: dry) side of the island should have tipped you off about the conditions on the windward (read: wet) side of the island.
- It´s never too late to recover, and what a spectacular recovery. To make 24 people´s days, or rather night. Well, that´s cool.

"You might think it a bit unseemly for the president´s close friends to use their proximity to power to profit from a war that the administration assured us had nothing to do with profiteering, but that´s only because you´re naive. "

From a Salon Article
And suddenly, he returns.

For fear of hopping on the fashionable bandwagon of backlash against blogging, I return, but in a slightly changed state, I guess. From here on out, i shall dispose of any illusions of continuity or coherence as a journal, or in any way recording the concrete happenings of my life in any complete manner.

Originally I had set this up as a kind of second-best passive method of keeping in touch with friends, or at least keeping friends aware, as my correspondence skills are dearly lacking. In any case, as I think many other people has, this blogging fad is in fact a half-narcassitic, half-exhibitionist endeavor that is primarily an expression of procrastination. In fact, I think at the core of it all, is the human vice of procrastination. In any case, it got kind of annoying to feel in some way "responsible" in keeping up with this blog, and in filling the gaps where they appeared. In any case, I think in some ways, as a tool for keeping in touch with friends, this second-best method is worse than none at all. I think it´s better to keep in touch with friends the traditional way (phone, letters, not email), and to reduce this blog to it´s namesake: dribble...

That way, I can forego coherence and continuity, and use this simply to express random thoughts and feelings , to induce vomit with mushy expressions of how much I miss being with Amy, or to, God forbid, procrastinate (like I´m currently doing).

Anyways, holy crap I miss Amy - we now both have our hawaii pictures up. They´re good pictures.